Court confirms Pirate Bay convictions

A Swedish appeals court has upheld (Swedish) the 2009 rulings against three out of the four founders of the now-defunct Pirate Bay. However, the appeals court altered the convictions by reducing the sentences of three of the four men convicted for operating the service while increasing monetary damages they must collectively pay from 30 million Swedish kronar to 46 million kronar (about US$6.5 million).

The Pirate Bay remains one of the most widely used torrent trackers used by online file sharers; the vast majority of the torrents tracked by the site are music, video, and software distributed in violation of copyright. Pirate Bay’s defense was that it doesn’t actually host copyrighted material itself, merely links to parts of items stored elsewhere by P2P clients. Nonetheless, the four defendants were found guilty in 2009 on grounds of assisting with violating copyright.

The appeals court decision applies to three of the Pirate Bay defendents, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström. A fourth defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, will get a separate appeals trial due to illness.

In the original verdict, each Pirate Bay defendant was sentenced to a year in prison. The revised sentences from the appeals court consider the actions of each defendant individually, rather than collectively, holding them each responsible for their individual actions. Neij will serve a 10 month prison sentence, while Sunde will serve eight months and Lundström four months.

The Pirate Bay has continued to operate in the wake of the defendants’ 2009 conviction, although they maintain they have no involvement with the site’s current activities. The site is largely funded by advertisements that appear beside torrent listings. The broader entertainment industry continues to work to get ISPs to block access to the Pirate Bay, as well as apply legal pressure to get the site shut down.